Preserved Topic: Browser Stats (Page 1 of 1)

Hi,

I was going through one of the threads that talked of browser stats. Thought this would be of interest and would like the experts to comment
http://www.awarecenter.org/tips/browser_stats.html

Ranjan
www.comp-act.ws
ranjan@comp-act.ws

Hmm, yes, this could be so, and I still come across people who gush about how many "hits" they get, without taking into account this very same datum! Most good stats packages will allow you to see browser breakdowns by "hits" and also by "visits" (I check my stats on the ozone site this way.) If you look at the browser breakdown by visits (ie: only one "hit" is recorded from each visitor, once a day. Want to be counted as 2 hits? Gotta come back tomorrow.) Looking at the browser stats calculated this way, usage by Lynx or such-like browsers is still barely noticeable, the fact is that text-based browsers are not used by very many people. I've heard this argument for at least 8 years now, and the fact is, it's mostly pissy whining from some sad, dated Unix admin who wishes that graphical browsers had never been invented. YMMV.

Your pal, -doc-

but this guy uses opera, with images switched off. and then i realised lemme check, took my cursor to the asylum logo.....no alt tag

Ranjan
www.comp-act.ws
ranjan@comp-act.ws

Oh yeah, I'm notoriously bad with alt tagging, it's just not that important to me. One of the things about being a graphics guy, who makes graphical constructions, that are all about the graphics and how to build the graphics, and other graphical play, heh. I joked about this once upon a time, long ago, my alt tags would look something like this...

[A really cool image!] [Another really cool image]
[a series of cool images 1] [a series of cool images 2] [a series of cool images 3] [a series of cool images 4] [a series of cool images 5]

(a little bit of text)

[A really cool image!] [Another really cool image]
[a series of cool images 1] [a series of cool images 2] [a series of cool images 3] [a series of cool images 4] [a series of cool images 5]

... you get the idea.

Now, when I do commercial sites I'm exactly the opposite, I've tweaked a few of my big graphical constructions to work exactly the same in Lynx, it all depends on the target audience.

Your pal, -doc-

well. i am just a beginner. what would you advice me? how much should i worry about cross browser coding? for example i did this site for a australian company who were into migration. the target audience was mainly third world countries in search of a better land like australia. when coding i kept in mind that they would have old systems and old browsers. but my personal site which i would soon make i intend only ie5.5 and ns6 above compatibility.

Ranjan
www.comp-act.ws
ranjan@comp-act.ws

Yah, it sounds like you have the right idea. I've done a lot of work for government web projects, and I had to take into consideration that while their intended user base is remarkably high-tech and advanced, the poor saps at the government offices were frequently running pre-win95 setups, and would probably be years in the upgrading yet! Wait'll you have to try scripting for IE3.0, that was one ugly browser with more bugs than you could shake a stick at. On my mac, I have browsers going back to the first release of Mozilla, ditto the first Netscapes (0.94beta was the first released, as I recall.) Depending on who you're trying to reach, you need to find some way to build systems similar to your users and then go from there. (I still use Lynx myself, for when I'm tracking down problems with local DNS issues, it's useful to telnet into some system halfway round the globe and see if your site is accessable from there, too! Still, unless you're dealing with some very specific demographic issue like this, it's usually safe to assume a v4.x browser or better.

Sometimes the use studies can create issues you'd never imagine. I worked for a big infrastructure company selling backbone connection to high-level ISPs around the world. It was a safe bet that their customer base had the bandwidth and probably had current brtowsers, right? Well, the folks who built the version of their site before me used Flash in a *big* way, and had no alternatives, it was Flash or nothing! Now at this time, their was no Unix Flash plugins available, none at all, and they were trying to sell to *unix* sysadmins, get it? Almost funny if you think about it. Never trust your asumptions, check things out first! (In the case above, they *did* check their stats and could *prove* that the unix audience was unimportant to them, since they had hardly any hits from Unix-based browsers! Heh, kinda funny.)

Your pal, -doc-

hey doc,

thanks for the advice. i admire your style. wish i could someday reach your high standards

Ranjan
www.comp-act.ws
ranjan@comp-act.ws